The complexities of digitization and street-level discretion: a socio-materiality perspective

Abstract

This study contributes to the debate on eGovernment and street-level discretion by using a qualitative case study of digitization at a street-level bureaucracy. This study advances this debate in three ways. First, we argue that the impact of digitization on street-level discretion can be best understood by examining the affordances and constraints that emerge relationally through the interactions between users (social) and technology (material). Second, subordinate-supervisor relations shape how street-level bureaucrats exercise discretion, and the introduction of technology reconfigures these relations. Third, system-level and street-level discretion shape rather than displace each other through a dialectic relationship.